I remember the first time I had a revelation about this verse it set me FREE:
“Everything is permissible–but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible–but not everything is constructive.”  – I Corinthians 10:23

What Paul is saying is you can do anything you want, but not everything is going to make you happy, or satisfied, or peaceful, or prosperous.

Especially with where I was in my life at that point, I needed to know I wasn’t being told “what not to do”, that I could make my own decisions and God would still love me and forgive me. What I needed at that time in my life was not more rules and religion, or guilt and condemnation, but, love, and grace and freedom. And in that verse I found it.

Eventually I just realized that I was a lot happier doing the things that would make me closer to Him anyway. Being more like Him.

And so there it is, right under the most appropriate heading the Bible ever published: “The Believer’s Freedom”.

I had a discussion about this tonight with a friend, and thought someone else might need that revelation as well.

[January 2013]